Struggling with stress

Since my track workout a week ago I have tanked. With an overwhelming amount of work from grad school and teaching, I haven't put any time into training. Without going into too much detail, I had a mid-term paper due on Thursday that I spent 4+ days working on because I haven't been getting the grades I want in the class. On top of that I had to give mid-term exams to all 5 of my classes, and term grades and comments for each one of my 84 students were due today at noon. I finished at 11:40... I have also had to deal with a lot of stress surrounding some struggling students - meeting with parents, school administrators, and such is incredibly mentally taxing on me. I like teaching because I get to do my Spanish teaching thing in my classroom with my students. Having to carefully word emails and/or conversations with concerns or suggestions to people that probably don't want to hear them is never enjoyable, and that accounts for 90% of my interactions with parents and administrators. Nevertheless, it's almost over. Tomorrow my life will return to normal if I can recover from the sleep deprivation by then.

In the past 8 days I did the track workout last Tuesday and a decent one hour run on Saturday, and then this morning I did a 40 minute baby interval run. No swimming, no biking...no bueno! Something odd is that my legs have actually been hurting more than they normally do after a week of 5+hours in the saddle and 4+hours running... Even my back is aching, and I haven't done anything with it! Anywho, I need to make training a priority through stressful times and use my time better. It isn't really that I haven't had time to get my workouts in, but rather I haven't used my time as efficiently as I should. I've been using the "this year I'm focusing on other things" as an excuse, which makes it easy to let workouts fall by the wayside. UNEXCEPTABLE!

The fact is I love to train and race. It makes me feel good physically and mentally. Therefore, I am finally committing to making this year a successful racing season. That's right - it's ON! No excuses. No prisoners. Just PR's! (I hope...)

So amigos, that's all for now. I feel rejuvenated mentally. I will be writing up a 3-4 week training block some time this week. Running is still the focus through April 1, but the bike and swim will finally start to get some attention. Thanks for reading!